| Budget Amount *help |
¥6,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥6,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥3,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,500,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥3,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
This year's research surveyed food intake, agriculture, aquaculture, livestock, material culture, and social organization in the Samta village in Bangladesh.
In pursuing the causes of the relationship that more members of low income households suffer from arsenic poisoning than those of higher income households, food intake surveys indicated that at the households with the higher rates of arsenic poisoning people consumed less animal protein. Aquaculture surveys found that not many households owned and harvested fish from ponds where people raised fish. Because the remaining households bought fish from the market, the amount of fish consumption strongly reflected household income. While most households raise livestock, those animals were not for self-consumption, but a kind of "saving" for unanticipated needs. All meat was bought from the market. Therefore, even lower income households owned animal resources that would potentially be used to prevent from arsenic poisoning, because of the lack of the total economic resources, these resources were not actually used as such. On the other hand, since higher income households were able to divert part of economic resources for the quality of food, as a result, their damage from arsenic contaminations remained little.
Agricultural surveys found that land ownership tended to be fragmented because of the equal inheritance system, and that household agricultural management lacks autonomous orientation. A survey on material culture suggested that a high percentage of material culture was supplied by the products of the village ecosystem. A survey on social organization showed that for a kind of social organization to be the medium of autonomous rural development, the "committee" principle appeareed to be useful.
A survey in a village in North-west Thailand indicated that rainwater harvesting could be a viable method to supply arsenic free water alternative to tube wells.
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